#one of more analyses to come!

[seiwas]

thinking about katsuki finding out about that little crush you had on shouto since seeing close-ups of him during the televised sports festival—you were in high school then, too.

he shouldn’t care about it because it doesn’t matter, it was so long ago and shouto’s always been marketed as the pro-hero pretty boy—consistently top 3 most handsome, the front cover of magazines, all that.

this is to be expected, it’s what everyone’s been tempted to react like.

but since finding out, he’s been stewing in… in whatever this bubbling, throbbing feeling in his head means. he’s snappier than normal, face scrunched up more than usual.

and every time he sees shouto he wants to strangle the hell out of him.

[madbard]

While listening to Epic, I noticed an interesting pattern with how antagonists are portrayed, and how Odysseus’ interactions with them are coded.

In Epic, the monsters Odysseus faces are rarely fighting for their own sake. Polyphemus attacks Odysseus’ crew to avenge his sheep, and Poseidon destroys his ships as revenge for his son’s suffering. Similarly, Circe only threatens Odysseus to protect her nymphs. Odysseus does not kill any of these enemies, and while he is occasionally criticized for letting them go free, the overall implication is that he did the right thing by sparing them.

Then we hit the Thunder Saga, and Odysseus begins his arc as a ‘monster’ by killing the sirens. His actions here are brutal, and whether or not they are justified is, I think, up to the listener. However, it’s significant that the sirens are the first foes Odysseus faces on his journey who aren’t either defending or avenging what they love. They attack unprovoked, and while Odysseus’ method of execution is gory, he is never punished for it by other characters within the narrative. Apollo is the only one to protest, and even he is swayed easily when Athena says (among other things) that the sirens were “trying to do him worse.” The sirens attacked first, and while Odysseus’ response was ‘monstrous,’ his crew obeyed his commands and he was not challenged or ostracized for giving said commands. He is only treated as a monster when he yields to Scylla, who also attacked without provocation.

Thus, in Epic, the monsters fighting to protect or avenge their loved ones are protected by the very story - killing them may be more convenient, but it isn’t the answer. However, the monsters who attack without provocation, for their own amusement or satisfaction, do not receive such respect. Killing them is acceptable, and cooperating with them is monstrous.

By this logic, Odysseus is justified in his actions, however atrocious. He attacks to protect his family, and therefore deserves mercy.

The suitors, on the other hand…

[scruncheduppaper]

seeing ppl on twitter’s takes about snowgrave kriselle makes me want to kill myself oh my godddd “its toxic” “regular kriselle better bc its healthier” DO YOU THINK I WANT TO SEE THEM MUSHY KISS AND BE LOVEY DOVEY AND HUG EACH OTHER??? NO!!! the APPEAL is that adding romantic connotations to their snowgrave relationship (which mind you very much already exists in canon) allow their relationship to become so much more interesting. do i think they’ll become truly endgame canon? do i think they’re in love with each other??? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!! AND I DONT WANT THEM TO!!! the POINT is that it’s supposed to be dark and interesting and exploratory of their characters in relation to the deconstruction of autonomy in video games through gender roles and principles of knighthood and the idea of the “damsel in distress”. not to mention that “shipping” regular kriselle and snowgrave kriselle isnt mutually exclusive either. in fact i think understanding both allows you to analyse their relationship much more fully and deeply than without considering the other side. and besides, isnt the fucking point of shipping to explore character relationships??? why would you want to Ignore nuance and depth rather than focus on it???? are you unable to handle anything deeper or darker than like fucking cocomelon??? if you hate character analysis and dark themes in relationships you can head on back there or smth idfk oh my lord i cant fucking TAKE IT ANYMORE

[onehundredfallenpetals]

A change of trains, an unexpected companion on the way home

[withthewindinherfootsteps]

…What’s this?? WWX not being a self-sacrificial idiot??

It’s almost like… that isn’t a personality trait…

[i-like-forcefem]

Hi! I just wanted to know if you'd ever heard of a really fun forcefem game called Crossdressing in Camelot? It's a really well-made one that definitely put some work into cracking my own egg. You play as a "man" who discovers that they have a talent for magic, but oops! the best way to grow stronger magically is to be more feminine! It has some really well-written characters, some fun dialogue and plot, and is free on itch.io!

Never heard of it before and gave it a shot!

It’s quite fun! Though sadly moved a bit too slowly for me personally, I can definitely see the appeal!

It was fun to give it a shot! Please tell me if anyone has more forcefem recommendations!

[jennyfromthebes]

and I won't get better, but someday I'll be free / cause I am not this body that imprisons me

[4lph4kidz]

the alpha kids' chumhandles are like. such a case of spelling it out for the audience honestly. dirk's chumhandle referencing Plato is very explicitly because he's read that stuff and i can even point to parts of Timaeus i think might have directly formed some of his in-character worldview. roxy's chumhandle referencing gnosticism was easier to write off as more of a wink at the audience than something she is especially knowledgeable about (particularly because the 'nostalgia' is the more overt part of her character) since but her lalondian relationship to fiction and authority is really really obviously elaborating on those gnostic themes in the text i don't know why it didn't click the same way before now

[irellia]

are people aware of the fact that Mizu is not canonically in any way shape or form.............. queer....bi.....

(quick note here because reading comprehension stays dead and people may not read the tag novel: I want bi Mizu! I hc her as sapphic! I love sapphic Mizu)

[akkivee]

choose your fighter: ichikuu lyrics edition

[thetardisisnotourdivision]

Hey did I ever tell y'all about the time I dreamed that I had a baby daughter called Ellie that began with my finding out I was pregnant and ended on like her third birthday?

I legitimately woke up thinking "I should go check on Ellie" and then realised she was never real and when I tell you I SOBBED. I've been haunted by an implacable sense of loss ever since. Did I travel to another dimension? Wtf happened because that was insane.

[youmakethelight]

Okay, but I'm casting my mind back to try to imagine how I would have felt about tboc daryl before season 10 got me so stupid about this show, when I used to be a casual viewer. And I still think I'd have just thought daryl lost his mind tbh.

This is just me going off on tangents about the show now, don't mind me.

He felt a bit off in season 1, I can't lie. The costume change would have thrown me even if I wasn't as attached, because I'm probs just the type of neurodivergent that struggles with too much change at once, and him being away from TF, in Europe, and looking so different, then calling Laurent useless, then the ways he looked at Isabelle at the end of 1x06 - that was all just too different to the Daryl I knew idk. But I stuck with it.

But having his first on-screen kiss be so entirely unpredictable for what I thought I knew of his character felt gratuitous*. And then it's like suddenly I'm being railroaded into following him on this rolleroaster that I don't understand. One minute he's longing for home, the next he's playing baseball and "just having fun". Then home has found him, but now he's invested in this kid I still haven't learnt to feel invested in yet. And he's never even talking about anything to do with home anymore, even after Carol is there? It's suddenly all just about Laurent, and part of the problem for me is there wasn't enough balance to convince me of the story.

And I think this was most of my difficulty with enjoying TOWL, too. (Don't come for me please for talking about my personal experience of watching TOWL.) I watched TOWL first out of all the spinoffs, and I remember this one part where I think Michonne and Rick were in a kitchen or something and Rick felt so different to me and it made me sad, and then she called it out. And he said something like that it's been so long, he's lost who he used to be or something like that. I can't remember exactly, but it made me sad. And I think, for me, I didn't get enough glimpses of the Rick I recognised within the short 6 episodes that I never felt satisfied or happy with it. And maybe I needed more TF references or something??? I didn't even feel enough concern for Judith or RJ from him - maybe I'm misremembering, but I think your memory of the feeling something gave you is important. I get that the leadership want these spinoffs to be accessible to people who didn't watch the flagship show, but I think that's a big part of where it's losing the magic for me.

The thing that was better for me about DD season 1 is that it was all about getting home, and his determination felt relentless throughout the first 5 and a half episodes before it suddenly got weird with Isabelle acting like they've been a family for 19 years. Like, before that, I felt connected to his mission.** But then in season 2, it's almost completely gone, and Carol feels like the only part I can still connect with. Like, I know Rick didn't mention Daryl either I think, but I wish both of them had talked about each other. Idk, it just would have felt more like it's giving me something I can connect with? Rather than just throwing the characters into entirely new situations and also deliberately making them feel a bit out of character?

That whole part in TOWL where Michonne feels surprised to find Rick a bit changed is so similar to what they seemed to want to do with Daryl and Carol, and I don't really get why they did it to either of them. It's more believable with Rick than Daryl bc 1. He isn't Daryl and definitely adapts more to new environments, and 2. It had been many, many, many years, not like a month. But idk, I still wasn't keen, but at least they gave it a redemption arc or whatever you'd call it. With daryl it's still just like - ???? And for what reason??? I don't know. I just don't find it compelling idk idk idk.

*Even in season 9, when we met Connie, I felt a bit like 'oh are they gonna force a ship here bc they have them spending time together 🤨 (rather than just letting connie want to help for her own character reasons rather than making it about daryl and shipping), but if it's gonna be someone who isn't carol, I think I'm okay with connie', like bc we actually had reasons to like her and there was chemistry with Daryl. So why neither Connie nor Carol, but Isabelle? The show just never got me invested in darabelle in any way.

I already liked connie before they had her going on missions with daryl, so I actually cared about her a lot. I loved seeing her on those missions bc I was excited for her to have more screen time and I found her character empowering. So, I didn't want to see her reduced to just being Daryl's love interest, and tbh, I don't think they handled it well, bc they still reduced her to being Daryl's accessory, rather than giving her her own character depth. But I *still* would have been more on board with pairing up Daryl with Connie than Isabelle. Tbh, by the time that Carol was broken up with zeke, and they had the conversation about running away together, I didn't think of Daryl and Connie as making sense to pair anymore... But I also didn't see much point in the Leah romance either, so whatever, I guess this show just has a pattern of pairing up Daryl with random women he doesn't have chemistry with, instead of the ones he does?

**I always remember that Zabel pitched the idea for the show as "what if, in trying to get home, you find something else?", and the thing is, in order to get me to be convinced that Daryl "found something else", I'd have needed A LOT stronger of a pull for the French story. There was nothing there that hooked me to becoming convinced of Daryl finding something while trying to get home. Just having him voice the words "I found something", having Laurent the prophet say "you miss her too, I can tell", putting his crossbow next to Isabelle's hospital bed, and having him look at her for an extended time after she recovers, doesn't suddenly convince me of that idea. Idk. I'm not in the TV industry, so I don't know how that magic gets done - like when season 10 slowly turned Lydia into one of my favourite characters after she was introduced as an antagonist. But I have enough brain cells to see (from the moment they nonsensically forced them to share a bed??) that they were trying to convince us Daryl found "something" in France, and tbh, if I can see the strain in their efforts to make it happen, it's probably not working. And even NR couldn't answer why Isabelle when asked at NYCC. He was literally like, "idk they have similar pasts?? Idk???". Like, girl, if you don't know, why should your audience?

[itsalwaysforyou]

jay not asking coach about letting lonnie onto the team bc he doesn’t want to do anything coach might disagree with…….

[danielnelsen]

so if you romance and ascend astarion you can kick him in the balls when he tries to turn you and it’s just very funny, he’s so pissy about it. so much for the most powerful vampire of all time or whatever, he stamps around like a toddler and then leaves forever

[batsplat]

reading your post about vale and marc mind games bc it came up on my dash and thinking about your point about how athletes like vale must convince themselves of certain things but also know the truth. and i guess with vale’s insistence that marc was never a fan of his, that he tricked him, that everything was a lie, when there are videos from marc at age seven naming vale as his hero, videos from him at age nineteen talking about collecting vale’s bikes, etc, things that would appear as “proof” i wonder if there’s some difference between what vale has convinced himself of and the (apparent) reality/truth that exists. obviously there is no way of knowing and it’s imo harder to figure out the “truth” of an emotional and personal situation that both parties were deeply hurt by than a sporting one. but it’s interesting because in 2015 the personal and sport elements were intertwined too

(x) hm yeah, I love the subjectivity of the whole thing, how it's all founded so much around these 'emotional' truths... there's this kind of fun tension where in late 2015/early 2016 both 'sides' are attempting to prove they're right with data, hrc is promising press conferences to present conclusive evidence, everyone's waving around sheets of paper with telemetry and obsessing around helicopter shots... but you won't actually be able to prove anything one way or the other, because this isn't something that can actually be 'proven'. this is about minds and it's about hearts - you can't find conclusive evidence for what's in either of them. that doesn't mean studying the events is pointless... but it can only ever tell you so much. valentino's initial allegation was couched in the language of facts, he wanted his audience to believe that you could read marc's intentions in a few numbers. but even if marc had wanted to sabotage him, you never would have found that in those numbers... and at the end of the day, valentino was using those numbers to tell a much bigger story

this is the difference to, say, qatar 2004, right? because if you're concerning yourself with what 'really' happened at qatar, then you can find a 'truth' of sorts - it should be possible in theory to know whether sete gibernau was involved in valentino's penalty or not. how that penalty came to exist is knowable. you can still do with this information what you want, argue about what sete was attempting to achieve with his actions, argue about what valentino knew or did not know and what he chose to do with that information - but the central 'conspiracy' is one that is based on real events. what marc wanted of valentino that year, the full spectrum of possibilities from completely innocuous to ragingly malicious, is not knowable in a similar way. even marc and valentino themselves won't completely understand their own intentions that year... nobody is knowable even to themselves, right? they've narrativised this to death and back in their own heads, including what happened in the races themselves... marc and valentino both going over the events again and again, in argentina, in assen, in phillip island, in sepang, in valencia... thinking about what they did, what the other did - the level of reflection that can obscure as much as it reveals. even isolated racing events that should be relatively straightforward are still essentially ambiguous, and continue to be enthusiastically debated to this day. the protagonists hold diametrically opposed views, and even there we can only guess at what they really believe

I'll include the autobiography bit again because it really is a bit of a banger

obviously, the context itself is a different one (and if you want to read more about 2003-05 then. well here you go). but it's such a good description... especially this bit

But then again, we riders always say all sorts of things. Sometimes we believe what we say, even when it sounds crazy, other times we’re just being hopeful and, still at other times, it’s all an exercise in self-delusion. We try to convince ourselves of something, because ultimately, every time you step on the track, words don’t matter, and it’s just you, the bike and your opponents.

"at other times, it's all an exercise in self-delusion". you don't say! "we try to convince ourselves of something"... valentino does have a reasonable understanding of his own working process, I think. it's very true what you say about the intertwining of the personal and the sporting processes, and this post contains some speculation about how valentino may have also changed in how he approached interpersonal relationships to his rivals over time. if you buy into this theory, you have a shift to the purely 'professional' rivalries with casey and jorge, where he was fairly conscious and deliberate in manipulating both that dynamic and how he felt within that dynamic. giving himself a target was all well and good, but it's all part of the game, all about attempting to get a competitive edge over his new challengers... it took a bit of a perfect storm for that friendship with marc to even be possible in the first place. maybe marc and valentino would have always ended up enemies - but not in every universe do they start out as friends

of course, the main story valentino ended up telling himself was that marc was out to destroy him. now, this is very much the topic for another post, but it is broadly reasonable to argue that marc approached his rivalry with valentino differently than he did any of his others. it's also not stretching things too far to suggest that marc was perhaps a little more focused on valentino than was competitively reasonable, that he seemed to take defeats to valentino particularly poorly... further into grey areas, was marc deliberately messing with valentino specifically? did he want to beat valentino at all costs, knowing he was pushing things, knowing it might cost valentino the title? where we get into even murkier territory is the question of what marc's preferred outcome for the title that year was, and whether he was really as disinterested as he said he was. it is just around up until this area where you can still more or less get to in a reasonable way, without too much delusion required - where the theory jumps off the cliff edge is by proposing that marc was deliberately orchestrating the phillip island race in order to hand jorge the title. that bit does not work. in a way, though, it's just the conspiratorial scaffolding for an emotional truth. this 'truth' that valentino felt very strongly is that marc had it out for him. once he was convinced of that, he basically just... arranged the facts to suit this narrative, but really the phillip island thing was a lot about having something a bit more 'solid' to grasp onto. it is where he makes the leap from 'malice' to 'conspiracy'. then, he blows shit up at sepang, and obviously from then on you do have marc essentially strengthening this narrative within valentino's mind. that's where we make the step to self-delusion, right...

that being said - the childhood hero thing. "is it true that he’s been my fan? is it true that he had a poster with me in his bedroom? I would like to check." now, in all honesty, I do think valentino knows marc was a fan. this is just my personal read, but to me that line was meant to twist the knife in, rather than being completely literal. the contentious bit, right, isn't that marc at one stage was a valentino fan, it's what this means. what valentino is asserting here is that this stance of marc's, where marc still claims a particular fondness for valentino as a result of how he's always been a fan of valentino, is fundamentally dishonest. valentino knows for a fact that just having a poster of someone in their room isn't enough to stop a rivalry from eventually going sour. let's bring in another autobiography excerpt:

The funny thing is that a few years earlier, when I was fourteen I had had a poster of Biaggi in my room. It was one of many posters on my bedroom wall and it showed Biaggi on the Honda 250. Nothing strange in that: he was Italian and I supported all the Italian riders. Besides, he was an aggressive rider and I always had a lot of respect for those riders who went on the attack. But, back then, I did not know him personally. It was only when I started to listen to his interviews and read what he said in the papers that my opinion changed. With Biaggi, no matter what happened, it never seemed to be his fault, there was always something wrong with the bike or the tyres. I thought he said a lot of things that I believed simply couldn't be true.

the thing is, almost all of these riders are going to have someone on their bedroom wall - and if you're marc's age, there's a pretty good chance that someone is going to be valentino rossi. it's not even valentino's first experience with a feud starting up with someone who had once been his fan... look at casey, who repeatedly said he was a fan of his, had admired him - yes, obviously, completely different degree to marc, but the point is he still publicly said it before that rivalry turned ugly. and jorge who was both a valentino anti-fan and a fan and was kinda actively weird about the whole thing. valentino made reference to this himself in 2010 when those two and him started sniping at each other when he was out with the leg break, saying that at least they were being honest now. like... in blunt terms, if you're valentino rossi, you do kinda expect most people to be a fan of you. so many of these younger riders have some childhood photo of themselves with valentino floating around. marc wasn't particularly special in that regard. the fact that he was a valentino fan isn't why valentino felt so warmly towards him. it wouldn't have been enough in itself for valentino to treat him in any way differently from his other rivals. valentino's been in this game for too long to get sentimental over that - at the end of the day, you need to ensure you're thinking about your rivals in whatever way you need to in order to give yourself the best possible chance to win. the posters weren't the reason why valentino lowered his guard around marc. so, keeping all that in mind, would it really be thar=t hard for valentino to believe that marc was at one stage a fan of his? seriously?

there's also this from uccio in that infamous 2016 interview:

if even uccio implicitly acknowledges the poster bit isn't fake, is valentino really not going to believe that marc had a poster of him at some stage?

now, this isn't the same thing as arguing that valentino had an accurate understanding of how marc felt towards him. it's entirely plausible to say that, yes, he wasn't being entirely literal about the childhood bedroom stuff... but he also didn't get what that hero worship actually meant to marc. you can be a fan of someone and you can be A Fan, and marc was A Fan. this wasn't just a reference point for marc... this was someone he deeply admired. someone he very much idolised. it's not just 'a poster', right - showing valentino marc's childhood bedroom probably doesn't achieve that much. it's something that valentino just interprets differently... to him, this doesn't mean anything in and of itself. which he's broadly right about - except he wasn't entirely aware of what level of fandom marc was actually operating on

so, why does he say it if he's not literally doubting the existence of any posters? first of all, he's just trying to be cruel here. he knows why it stings, right - he's calling the very foundation of their relationship a lie. marc had this pretence up the whole time, and now valentino is finally forcing him to drop it. marc's being dishonest - and how better to argue his case than by saying not even the posters were real? the second reason is that it's an act of erasure. I talk in the sete post about how he does this with that rivalry... most noticeably by excluding sete almost entirely from his autobiography. here, valentino takes a slightly different approach over the years, but as the other feud with deep interpersonal repercussions it's broadly coming from the same playbook. this is the most radical way you can cut ties, right... you can argue the bond never existed in the first place. if it was all just a lie, then the relationship isn't just over - it was never really there. it's the most brutal and complete way you can burn your bridges. marc isn't just denied valentino's friendship... valentino isn't even allowing him to be his fan. he's attempting to erase the continuity between them entirely, how marc isn't just his successor in literal terms of his results but also in the more abstract sense of how he modelled himself after valentino. it's this bit that indicates the finality in valentino's decision perhaps better than anything else. this is the end, in all the ways that matter most

[britneyshakespeare]

sometimes i read some people's literary analysis and i'm like geez, at times this can be quite gushy and sentimental... but then i look in the mirror and i'm like well. i'm really rather gooey myself